Google I/O Paper Clouds

San Francisco, CA, United States

We were invited by Google to design and produce a signature installation for the I/O 2014 conference at Moscone West that tied into design themes of the larger event concept design undertaken by our studio.

The Paper Clouds installation design approach evolved in direct relation to our commissioned concept design for the overall Sandbox and Partners exhibit layout on the second and third floors of Moscone West convention center. While the larger exhibit design was ultimately produced by en exhibition design build firm according to our concept design, our firm directly took on the production, fabrication and assistance with installation of Paper Clouds.

The Paper Clouds design process began as a combined effort of digital scripting/modeling alongside analogue prototyping. The decision was made early in the process to work with very basic, familiar and available materials - paper and staples. A series of mockups were built to test the behavior of the paper array in relation to aggregation and connection logics. The final installation employed 40,000 sheets of 8.5x11 paper were hand stapled together into stacks which were bound together as an array by a CNC-milled plywood laminate framework. The specific strategies employed for aggregation, connection, together with the formation of the overall array's oblique underlying geometry, produce a transformative, 'greater-than-sum-of-parts' final result, whereby paper and staples take on new dimensions.